


reunion

by curtailed



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Helmstroll Sollux Captor, M/M, Rescue Missions, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-14 17:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21019784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtailed/pseuds/curtailed
Summary: The helming romances you've privately read always portray it different; there, the dashing hero reunites with the helmsman partner, all constrained and entrapped in biowires, and the protagonist deftly saves them from the villain's grasps. Of course the road to recovery would be rocky, but love is uttered and confessed on sterile hospital beds and the heart beats stronger from within.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> where i write anotehr solkat fic because they're my actual OTP, sorry kids

The helming romances you've privately read always portray it different; there, the dashing hero reunites with the helmsman partner, all constrained and entrapped in biowires, and the protagonist deftly saves them from the villain's grasps. Of course the road to recovery would be rocky, but love is uttered and confessed on sterile hospital beds and the heart beats stronger from within.

Sometimes they go into detail. The helmsman confesses that their thoughts have been always preoccupied by their partner -- that the only way they retained their sanity was the thought of their faces, their mouths, their gestures, their sweet, tender words. Your more explicit material graphically details bulges and nooks in the form of helming wet dreams. But it's all there; the saturated love filling the air, the outpour of emotion and grief and reunion and rejoicing.

They don't ever mention that the helmsman is completely fucking comatose when he topples into your grasp, Eridan already sealing up the biowire scars while your team fights for their lives in the hallway. And as you and his once-kismesis haul ass through the corridors, painting the walls spectrums of blood colors, all you can think about is how fluttery his pulse is, like a feather scraping your hair. 

A skeleton.

====

Surprisingly, the helming romances you've privately read don't always flinch from detail -- they're more than happy to go into detail on the helmsman's emanciated form, or how sunken their eyes are in their hollows, how thousands and thousands of scars mark up around their faces and down their arms and how their tattered uniform -- the one you gave him _right before_ the mission and you told him you'd fucking kill him if he didn't return -- sticks to their skin in a horrible mess of blood and sweat and other fluids, fluids you never want to identify, and how you can see their bones shift in their torso when Equius carries him to a stretcher and lays him down like he's an injured baby bird.

Your novels don't retract from delineating the surgeries either; skin is peeled, scalpels sharpened, black fungus growth carefully removed from his internal organs. Apparently not all the biowires were sterilized. Naked, vulnerable, utterly bare -- he lies in unconscious fugue on the bed as Equius and Kanaya operate on him with the skill of a mechanist and sewer, respectively. You watch from the side window. He never makes a reaction, even when Kanaya threads a suture _so fucking close_ to his heart and you watch yellow blood ooze down his grub scars, his legs, pooling on the floor.

====

They do, however, always have the reunion.

You're a sucker for reunion scenes. Your favorite cherished moments, where you always break down in tears no matter how many times Sollux has made fun of you of it, is where the couple runs toward each other on the seaside -- in the meadows -- their expressions of raptured joy always tearing holes in your heart. Their worlds are aligned in axises again; the stars and sun can move properly, air can be breathable, because it doesn't matter what hell you're in when you're with your other half. It's gushingly romantic. It's sweet enough to procure diabetes.

You can't even have that.

You sit by Sollux's bedside for half a perigee, observing the struggle for his mind to reconnect with his body. It's 50/50 chance, Terezi tells you, but the expression on her face says the diametric opposite. The moment he was pulled out of the helmsblock, it was already decided.

The moment you couldn't save him, it was already cemented.

You don't flit back to your memories. Those memories contain him _living_ \-- raw -- like how his fangs always escaped a little when he did a full smile or how quick and soft his fingers were across the keyboard, the same fingers that stroked your nubby horns and down your stomach and farther, how sometimes he just held you and breathed in at your juncture of neck and shoulder, tongue lightly flicking across his skin, trying to commit your patterns to his memory; how so many times you've fallen asleep to the sound of keys clicking and how he always pushed up his glasses into his hair and getting it tangled with his twin pairs of horns because he barely deigned to comb through hairlocks, or how he would cradle you when you were at your lowest and whisper to you that it was absolutely not your fault, even if you stumbled hiveward in the middle of the day with blood, and the first time you had visited his hive because he killed his own moirail and you spent the whole night rinsing rust blood from his skin until dawn, when he had turned to you and your mouths met with the softness of silk -- the start of something beautiful, beyond your pathetic comprehension -- 

You -

_you_

You don't look back on those.

He dies with barely a struggle. His breath hitches by a miniscule amount -- and the hope that flared up within you almost made you crumple, it lit you up like a falling star -- and just like one, it snuffed out with the impact of a thousand boulders in your stomach. The flatline monitors are harsh and loud in the room. In the brief moments where you'll be alone, just before the other footsteps stream into the room, you try to muster the courage to draw the sheet over his head. You can't even do that; something about his dead, broken body physically repels you, keeping you at a agonizing radius, and all you can think about is that the last thing he ever saw would be the face of someone inserting wires into his brain, not a comrade or a friend or you promising him to save him, to bring him back to where he belonged, where he would be safe and treasured and

alive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so what if i flipped roles
> 
> u can porbably guess this was not the hardest to write

Even in Karkat's bottom-feeder roster of movies, there's a common trend among any film of passing caliber: the troll's in distress, tied up on the plank, being lowered into boiling magma, and then the protagonist swoops in heroically at the nick of time, scraping them away seconds from mortal peril. Of course the road to rescue would be rocky, but love is uttered and confessed in quick word parries and dashing getaways and both hearts pump brighter from within.

Sometimes the scenes are dragged out agonizingly. The conclusion is foregone -- it's even printed on the back of the DVD cover when the company's lazy enough -- the buildup is a facade, the way they hang onto each other like they're each others crutches, memorizing the contours of their faces for all the times they've been absent in their minds. Your more explicit scenes go into loving detail of reunion coitus, hazed on endorphines and sheer relief, slurry stained into passionate hues. But it's all there; the desperate love soaking in the air, the deluge of panic and relief and reunion and elation.

They don't ever mention that the victim is on the brink of unconsciousness when you disentangle him from the glowing chains, Gamzee already wrapping up the flaying wounds with a blanket while your team fights for time on the podium. And as you and his once-moirail haul ass back to the ship, splattering the ground ranges of highblood colors, all you can focus on is how dull his pulse his, like a clock trying to tick underwater.

A revenant.

====

Surprisingly, the trash bin of dusty films you privately enjoy don't shy away from detail -- they're more than cheerful to plow into how battered the victim is, bones showing and skin peeling, face gaunt and starved, how welts and welts of scarred tissue blossom across their limbs like cracked glass and how gallons of darkened blood stain their tattered cloak, the one you gave him _right before_ the sermon and you told him you'd fucking fry him if he didn't make it back in one piece -- how it's almost melded with the skin around his neck like a noose and doused in fluids and you _know_ it's not just bright red blood, it's so many others, and you can hear how each joints pop and creak as Gamzee shifts him onto a cot and wipes at his wounds like he's a wounded deer.

The B films don't detract from delving into the cleanup process either; skin is scrubbed, tweezers sterilized, cool liquid rubbed onto the swelling and bruising from ruptured internal organs. Whoever tortured him wasn't precise about it; it's brutal, sloppy, messy. Small, defenseless, utterly helpless -- he's sprawled in a half-conscious state, eyes glassily staring beneath swollen lids as Vriska feeds him through a tube and Tavros inspects his legs for nerve damage. You watch from the doorway. He only stirs a little when Vriska circles a thin blade around his eye, cutting away at infected tissue, and if her hand slipped it would cut so _fucking close_ to his brain and you watch beautiful, terrible candy-red dribble down his face, dampening his hair, his collarbone, dripping onto the sheets.

====

They do, however, always have the celebration.

You're a sucker for the after party. When a rescue mission's been done and done, when the crew's on the deck drinking synthesized sopor and drunk under the moons and completely flooded with life, with joy, that each of their breaths are treasured and valued like priceless diamonds. Sometimes you can't resist jumping out of the couch and cheering, much to Karkat's endless mirth. The world spins right again, the lovers gazing starward, because they've been through hell and back and all is perfect in the world when they're by each other's sides. It's beyond your brain's ability to absorb. You could wax poetry on this.

You couldn't even have that.

You lie down next to Karkat for a week, watching him struggle to stay consciousness, to keep food and water down and have nerves attempt to reattach to his muscles. You don't know what happened to him in the bowels of the Empire's dungeons. If he ever becomes lucid, you don't think you want to know.

If he ever becomes lucid.

You inspect your memories with the deliberate slowness of a sloth. They burn bright and empty in your periphery, like bleeding stars, because it's him cuddled on the sofa with only his hair and little nubby horns poking out of a mess of blankets or how square and blunt his fingers were pawing wildly through his romance novel stash, the same phalanges that stroked your face when you were on your downswing and lightly dragged a nail over your smaller horn membranes until you came apart in his arms, how sometimes you could just wrap him up into yourself like a gift, the greatest gift in the world, and feel him gently trace your lips with a single finger, rubbing in the texture; how many times you directed his hands to code abysmally at his husktop and float gamegrubs over his head, and how you could bury your hands in his thicket of hair and hear purring rumbles in his chest, or how he would calm your shaking when all you heard was the screaming of the damned, Aradia's voice clear and melodic as you kill her with your hands, and how in the wee hours of dusk he picked out the scrapes of blood under your fingernails and granted you the smallest, softest kiss against the corner of your mouth, but inside all you felt was fire --

You pick them apart, breathe them in, and tear them out.

He doesn't wake by the second week. By all accounts he's alive -- his chest rises and falls, his blood still leaks harsh red, but his eyes are heavy and closed and he never comes out of his slumber. The heart monitor always pulses; rhythmic, slow, barely discernible, but his heart contracts and relaxes and he unwittingly draws in his breaths. Every day a revolving door of people visit him; some friends, some trusted followers, all pledging to his words, to his dreams, to his passion. Just before daybreak you would have him to yourself. The sunlight wafts in gently, filling the room with sleepy gold, and sometimes he twitches and sometimes _something_ shifts -- but it's always just a trick of daylight, of another repetitive dawn. He's been flayed and burned to an inch of his life, horrors invading his head and body, soul crushed mercilessly to his core; and maybe he called out for you, wishing you would save him, sweep in at the last moment and burst him out of his cell with a spray of psionics and charge free into the night, only wind and water as your pursuers, and then despair would've crashed down on him like a wave and it would be cold and grey and dead down there, no familiar faces, no reassuring words, no one to hold him and whisper sweet nothings into his ear, and all he would've noticed was his blood

bright and damning crimson.


End file.
